Barefoot Traction Testing in Indian Bathrooms: A Novel Experimental Framework

Barefoot slips and falls are common in Indian bathrooms. However, to date, there have been limited experimental works to understand barefoot traction on slippery bathroom floorings. This is majorly due to the lack of any barefoot simulant, which is structurally, materially, or tribologically like the human foot. In context, this pioneering work consisted of designing and fabricating a human foot simulant for barefoot slip testing, and a novel experimental framework was developed for slip testing of this simulant on realistic dry and wet surfaces. Imaging and additive manufacturing was employed to fabricate the simulant and tune its structural and mechanical properties with the foot. The coefficient of friction (COF) was measured using the simulants for short and medium-length slips on eight glazed porcelain tiles commonly found in Indian bathrooms. The COF was observed to decrease moderately from dry to wet flooring conditions, and drastically with the use of highly viscosity shampoo. Generalisable ACOF was measured across floorings for soap and shower gel-contaminated conditions. High repeatability and low intra-tile variations were also recorded for the traction tests with the simulant. The results from this study are anticipated to provide important guidelines for barefoot slip risk assessment in bathrooms and also assist in the selection of suitable anti-slip bathroom floorings in the future.